now you know and you can rest easy. i'm sure you will be watching. cnn world headquarters in atlanta, thank you very much for joining us. i will see you back here next weekend. good night. violence fuelled by drug cartel s. >> an airplane carcas and about 30 to 40 aircraft laying out here. >> can the violence be stopped? larson travels to the frontlines of a car few people know about. twisted justice?

>> i reached for the gun. >> i was convicted of second-degree murder. >> he would walk free after the convict was overturned. how did he end up back in prison. >> you must have been crushed when they told you you had to go back. . >> revealing investigations and fascinating characters. stories with impact. this is cnn presents. with your host tonight, brooke baldwin and sanjay gupta. >> the bloody drug wa are in mexico. >> it's a region that is more violent. >> the commander has called the northern triangle of guatemala and honduras the deadliest place in the world. >> the homicide rate has more than doubled in five years. cnn goes to the heart of the violence. >> the past year over 17,000 people have been murdered in

guatemala, el salvador and honduras. in honduras, over 90% of crimes like murder are never solved. they call it the impunity. i asked the chief of police the second biggest city here if they would take us along when a call came in on a crime. a minute later, we got our wish. >> we jumped in the trucks and we are headed there to see what's going on. >> it's completely real. we are not making up how violent this is. we have been here four hours and our first bodies turned up. he has been shot. the impact wound appears to be

on the right side of his head. the police commissioner said as is typical in these situations, nobody saw or heard anything and nobody knows this guy. >> nobody wants to talk and that suggests people are afraid. as they should be. >> they have been plagued and deported. in the last few years, it's also the main corridor for markets coming up from south america. as the big mexican cartel s have looked for staging areas here, murder rates skyrocketed. . >> so this is the entrance to the morgue and there must be 15 bodies here. yesterday they received seven bodies and this morning five more.

they get new bodies every day. 80% are from violence and they are shot with a pistol or rifle. >> not much to say. this woman and her mother who just lost two sons. the son and the brothers of these two women, there is a human cost at the drug war and the hondurans are paying in blood. i came from the morgue. theres piling up. why is this so violence? >> the violence is not traditional. it has increased as the drug traffic through honduras increased. so i think a lot of it has to do with drugs. >> the murder rate here is 16 times the u.s. rate.

murder has become so normal here that there is hondurans who don't seem to spend a lot of time agonizing over it. outside the morgue, i met darwin who led me to his place around the corner. >> he told me this is a king size for a fat person. darwin is probably the happiest coffin builder i have ever met in my life. he speaks very fast and didn't understand everything. the one take away i got is the coffin business is booming. >> security pervades and to visit a violence reduction program backed by the government, he had to have heavily armed policemen out front. >> it's violent, but that's what we are working on. >> can you ask them how many of

them have seen violence and how many of them have seen somebody killed or somebody shot? >> it's hard to get a sense of what it's like to live here when you have a heavy police escort everywhere you go. we found someone who moves freely through the neighborhoods and let us come along. >> we should leave our phones and money and everything? >> first we were warned. no valuables or phones or passports or nothing that can get us killed. >> if you want to come with me me. >> sure. >> they are moved from the congo to honduras early in 2011 to had the the office hereof doctors without borders. >> we are trying to take care of the violence. it's quite a big challenge. >> were you surprised at the level of violence? >> i was shocked.

i was shocked. i didn't know. it's like the united states and mcdonald's and burger king and access to everything, but in fact you meet exactly the same problems as you do in congo and in the capital city. . >> the doctors without borders launched a street outreach missions. every day a team of doctors and social workers walk the most dangerous areas. >> you are not scared? >> we have to be to prevent this. >> what goes han in hand with the violence is extreme poverty. the doctors without borders team was given medical and psychological care on a side street. it looked like so many

neighborhoods throughout latin america. if we were not told, we wouldn't have guessed it was so violent. >> this is his tarp and he's got -- this is his kitchen where you see the three fish being cooked. >> they cook for all of the street children here is one of the other things. the other thing that you notice when you are speaking to them is all these kids around here. even in plain view, all of them are sniffing glue. >> because we were the first foreigners let alone journalists that the street team had taken with them, they were extra alert to security. >> the security said it's tim time to go.

>> as we headed back to the van, the market closed down. night was falling and the city is more dangerous and getting ready to shut down.

>> it's been called the most violent place on earth. we met man who is fighting a war against a tidal wave of drugs and murder. police surveillance camera in guatemala captures a scene that is common. a car stops at an intersection and a man is forced out and shot. it was one of the nearly 6,000 murders in guatemala in 2011. eight times the u.s. homicide rate. fueling the violence, narco trafficking as mexico's cartel s move south. what we are talking about really is in many of these areas is on governed space. these are the authorities. >> yes. >> we are briefed by a dea agent

who asked not to reveal his face. . >> the m 240 machine gun, part of the 762 round and we need help where we are going. dodging storms, we flew with the dea on two gun ships into a no man's land in guatemala that soon becomes uninhabited stretches of jungle and much was flood because of the rainy season. soon we were flying over clandestine landing strips used for smuggling drugs from venezuela. sometimes the planes crashed and since one load of cocaine more than paid for a plane, often they were just abandoned. there is an airplane carcass right there below me.

you can see it has birds on it and it crash landed. it's a little flooded from the rains, but when it's dry, there is about 30 to 40 aircraft just laying out here. all of them were abandoned after they brought the drugs in. . >> after the u.s. helped beef up the defenses, the traffickers look for another place to land. they chose guatemala's violent neighbor, honduras, the new frontline. >> it's the first entry point. >> jim has been fighting that war for more than 12 years. >> either by boat or air track and an airplane coming in. the best opportunity to stop the drugs is at that point. >> as head of the u.s. drug enforcement office, jim kenny runs america's first line of defense with the support of only two other dea agents.

if jim's small team can't intercept the drug when is they land, the likelihood is they will make it all the way to the u.s.-mexico border. it's highly unusual for a dea agent in overseas operations to be seen on camera. i was allowed to follow jim around honduras. >> we are out there. this is the wild west. >> they are saying 85 to 80% of the 25 plus tons that come through here a month. it's maritime. >> the boat we were riding on was an interceptor boats they use to stop smuggling boats whenever the dea gets intelligence gets information about drugs coming in. when we saw the boats confiscated from smugglers, it was easy to see how outmatched

they are. >> in the footage, you can see a smuggling boat firing on a honduran navy boat that is trying to intercept it. >> last night we had a pretty good information about a go fast coming up that was off the island. unfortunately we are not able to find them. very difficult. you go out and a very vast wide area. >> a needle a haystack. >> the last 2 1/2 years, it feels like he aged ten years. >> it's frustrating at times because we a lot of times have the knowledge and intelligence to be able to respond and do things. but they always have been with a lack of resources and it's difficult. it puts gray in the old beard. >> jim has been making progress. changing a crucial piece of the puzzle here. >> this is your piece right

here. these guys coming out. >> these guys are a vetted team that we trust and we can pass very sensitive intelligence to. >> this is jim's vetting unit. specially selected police officers chosen for their skills and their honesty. >> corruption is an issue as it is in central america and south america. they have been polygraph and they are all drug test and interviewed and they get trained. when we train each one forever evidence handling up to the tactics. >> when jim gets a tip about an aircraft with a load of cocaine, it is the vetted team's mission to fly to the landing site and intercept it. there is a high well likelihood they could get in a firefight. >> yes, and they have. very dangerous and they are very brave. they know that there is a very high possibility that there will

be a confrontation. >> when jim arrived early in 2009, the vetted unit had seven officers. now it has 41. of the 94 smuggling planes that labb landed in honduras, theyer and cented seven, five by jim's unit. that doesn't sound like a lot except that the total for the previous year was zero. >> is it exhausting? >> it can be. there is lots of long days we hope it's fruitful at the end. an accident doesn't have to slow you down. with better car replacement,

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they are outmanned and outgunned. in order to win the war against drugs in central america, authorities have to overcome overwhelming odds. >> amid the violence and the culture of corruption, there a few signs of glimmering hope. a report on the front lines of the narco war. it's saturday night. the cappal of honduras. the most violent nation on earth. police may look tough, but in fact they are outmanned and outgunned. their control over parts of the city is virtually nonexistent. >> the the police brought us up to this bluff to point out this

piece of graffiti on the side of the believe that said if you touch us, we will kill you. for them that's an indicator of what they are facing. it took 30 police officers with assault weapons for us to visit this neighborhood. this is one of the most violent neighborhoods in the world. not just in the city, but the world. the police while they may seem heavy handed, there is the only evidence to wrestle back from the gangs that overrun the city. there is not much hope. the murder rate rises and we found signs of progress. we met the minster in a region notorious for corruption, carlos is a crusader who has shaken up the system. >> in central america, six out of ten mores are drug-related. >> they t dwarfs the country's

resources. >> $10.5 million in four years. >> he said this past year has government seized about $3 billion worth of drugs. the budget of the government is only about $5 billion. he said anti-marks operations alone won't bring down the horrific murder rate. to do that he had to convince the public that murders would be solved. step one is create a team. in the ministry of justice, i visited the csi unit. here teams take turns living in shifts like firefighters in a firehouse. >> in this room, a crime is monitored 24 hours a day. when a crime is committed, the radios start going off and they launch the investigators to the scene of the crime.

in the last week, how many times have you gone out to investigate crime scenes or murders? >> six times. >> wow. >> the minster said the new efforts are paying off. >> in the past couple of years, the murder rate has begun to decline. >> for takes more than training investigators. radical surgery had to be performed to fight one of the region's biggest and oldest problems. corruption. this is the large suburb, population 1 million. it used to be one of the more violent areas in guatemala city, but two crime-fighting pilot programs were introduced with aid from the state department. what's unique about this station is that they actually fired 100% of the police officers here and they took all rookies out of the

academy. corruption is so endemic they had to start with fresh officer who is were never on the street. >> the results have been dramatic. the conviction rate has moveed from practically to 98%. >> i met an energetic mayor along with aid commissioned a system that had a big impact. in one neighborhood 53 cameras had been install and crime has dropped by 90%. >> throughout the entire city is down 28 to 30%. >> this is one of the murders that the cameras were able to solve. this guy jumped out of a van and pulled out a gun. now he is shooting. they took a screen of prior to the murder that we just saw and

it allowed them to identify the guy who committed the and you have this guy who handed the guy who committed the shooting the gun. >> in addition watching the criminals, the cameras are away for the mayor to observe his own police force. . >> it's funny, but in a place where police accountability is a huge issue for him to be able to see his officers on the job, it's a huge i78 provement. >> the murder rate has begun to decline slightly. still it's eight times the rate in the us. the minster has a message for america, the largest consumer. >> consuming drugs has consequences.

every kiloand every gram is paid for in blood in latin america and central america. >> joining us, and sound thank goodness. all cleaned up. >> we see so many stories out of mexico, but to see these images out of guatemala and honduras, what led you to this story? >> there has been a lot of focus on mexico and the news and the violence has been disturbing and it has been visible because they are our nearest neighbor, but the corridor in central america has been a major trafficking route. four years ago, less than 1% of the drugs moved up through the corridor and you fast forward over 60% are moving via land and with that has become an increase in violence in places like

honduras and guatemala. even this month the peace corps is pulling out of the operations. >> you got the demand as you point out and supply, but it is stopping the drugs moving along that route. what's being done for that? >> the right question because it's such a critical choke point for narcotics. over 90% of the cocaine is making their first stop in honduras. law enforcement is beginning to pay attention to this area, but it's a very difficult battle. it is run by the military with air assets and i embedded myself with the dea. >> it is fighting an uphill battle here. how do they feel in terms of resources? >> they would like to bring more resources to the fight. the dea is a very tough, very professional organization, but the power of these cartel s

which will effectively operating with supply chains and distribution centers, the head of the sinaloa cartel , it was on the forbes list. these are very, very powerful organizations and they are very hard to combat. >> that's frightening. i learned a lot and we appreciate it. glad you are back save and sound. >> thank you. up next, was it murder or miscarriage of justice. two families torn apart by a deadly shooting. [ woman ] when i grow up, i want to take him on his first flight. i want to run a marathon. i'm going to own my own restaurant. when i grow up, i'm going to start a band. [ female announcer ] at aarp we believe you're never done growing. thanks, mom. i just want to get my car back. [ female announcer ] discover what's next in your life. get this free travel bag when you join at aarp.org/jointoday.

>> here are your headlines this hour. gabrielle giffords is stepping down from congress this week. she posted a video on you tube announcing she is leaving to focus on her recovery. a little more than a year ago, giffords was shot in the head by a would be assassin. six died that day. the company that makes the blackberry hand held is turning over the top leadership. the long time executive is out as cochief executives. the current coo is in as president and ceo. investors were pressuring him to make changes and the company has been struggling to compete with rivals apple and google. it is official it will be the owe giants against the patriots in the super bowl two weeks from now. it will be a rematch years ago

when the giants pulled an upset and ended the patriots's perfect season. new england defeated baltimore earlier. this year's game will be played in indianapolis. good luck to all. those are the headlines this hour. keeping you informed. cnn, the most trusted name in news. [ monica ] i'm away on a movie shoot

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our criminal justice system is based upon the promise of a fair trial. >> what are if a trial is not fair and they stack the deck against you unfairly. >> debra brings us the story of a man who is sitting in prison and maybe for life even after the trial that put him from was found bia judge to be full of holes. . >> i was convicted of second-degree murder in 1997. i was sentenced to 20 years to life. >> new york city police officer richard served 11 years in prison before a judge tossed out his conviction and he was sent home. his friends and family celebrating his release. >> when you walked out -- >> it was surreal. i couldn't believe it.

my ankles weren't shackled and i was like wow,ing this real. >> a free man he spent two years rebuilding his life. he got a job, an apartment, and a wife and just as suddenly in a twist of the criminal justice system, it was all taken away. >> i still cannot adjust to being back here. richie for short. the victim was charles campbell and amateur boxer who worked with under privileged kids. his older brother called him chaz. >> he was a wonderful athlete and a wonderful person. he was a crist nan and loved

kids. loved people. all people. >> it started around 5:00 on a clear autumn day. richard was working behind the counter of his family-owned deli. he stopped by to help his brother-in-law and father who was recovering from a heart attack. parking was a major problem along this busy street. he owned the building and said tenants were withholding rent to protest the lack of open spaces. he didn't know about the ongoing tension when is he pulled into this reserved spot and went across the street to get a piece of pizza. his father remembers that day. >> i asked him if he could move to the other lot. then he refused to do it. >> so the deli owner did what the police had hold him to do. plaster a sticker on the window.

here's what the father and son said happened when the father saw the sticker on his new car. >> i need a couple of here. i just broke out. >> first he was in the store and he saw them running across the street and he came and i was like this. he came behind me and he stepped like this and he put his hands up like this and said there is no need for this. >> then -- >> he hit richie in the face. >> it was like getting hit with a hammer. he was just out of control. he was somebody who didn't want to listen at the time. >> the fight spilled into the middle of the parking lot as father, son, and brother-in-law wrestled campbell to the ground. >> when i went to put my hand under his head, he said that's it. i had enough. i said to richie, i said it's

over. you let him up and now whenever i had a fight when i was a kid, it was over, it was over. >> but the fight wasn't over and what happened next changed everything. charles campbell outnumbered 3-1 went to his car. other than leave, he pulled out a bat. >> this man about a bat in his hands, how much more of a threat did that make him to your father? >> a deadly threat. >> back in the store, rich said he saw campbell strike his father not once but twice. >> i saw him up with the bat and he started to swing. that's where i reached for the gun. >> the officer grabbed the gun and raced outside, firing three times, hitting charles campbell in the middle of his chest.

. >> by the time it came out, my training kicked in. >> he doesn't remember the moments, but only that one of the responding officers handed him the gun and asked for help removing the bullet chip. he, his father and brother-in-law were taken to the police station. >> the shooting was racially motivate and confirmed by the district attorney. >> there were racial epitaphs that the victim was stabbed at the time prior to the shooting. that information has been confirmed. >> did you ever use any racial slurs? >> we never used a curse word or any racial words at all. none. >> campbell's brother was not there and describes the events as he came to understand them.

>> witness michael dylan said -- >> the eyewitness less than 30 feet away did not tell a news crew he saw the bat aimed at the other one. >> you can hear the smacks a block away. you can see the father getting beat with a bat. >> watching on television, saying you see your father getting beat. you have to do something. it was strictly self defense and i remember saying thank god for this witness. >> we brought murder changes. >> that are same night, the district attorney charged richie with both intentional murder and murder with depraved

indifference. >> i was like how is this murder. this was the first time you killed a man. how heavily does that weigh on you? >> not a day i don't think about it. i believe i saved my father's life that day. >> coming up -- the trial that outraged a judge. >> was this a miscarriage of justice? >> believe it was a miscarriage of justice. you know the good folks over at prilosec otc have asked yours truly to teach you about treating frequent heartburn. 'cause i know a thing or two about eatin'. if you're one of those folks who gets heartburn and then treats day after day... well that's like checking on your burgers after they're burnt!

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>> in the case against a former nypd officer, did they suppress crucial evidence that could have changed the verdict? one judge was convinced that's exactly what happened. >> richard sr. is consumed by the shooting that sent his son to prison to serve 20 to life. >> i wish my son was never there. weather i got killed or not doesn't make any difference. what do i have now?

my family is torn ark part literally. where is my son? >> we wanted to talk about the shooting with the police department and the then westchester county district attorney. repeated interview reports were denied. in her book, she said no question the shooting was racially motivated. race dominated the headlines and never came up at trial. instead prosecutors claimed he shot charles campbell in a murderous rage. the assistant district attorney patricia murphy said this is a case about revenge. this is a case about retribut n retribution. this is a case about pay back. prosecutors argued the father, son, and son-in-law ganged occupy on campbell so he had no choice but to grab a bat from his car. >> i know him. when he grabbed that bat, the

idea of getting that bat was to just show, back on up. i'm not trying to start nothing here, but i will finish it. they kept charging it. he swung i think once at the father. >> do you think charles kemp bell could have killed your father had that third hit struck him? >> sure, absolutely. it was a metal baseball bat. >> everyone is saying it's over a parking space. >> what about a baseball bat? >> there wouldn't have been a gun. >> prosecutors supported by eyewitness testimony convinced the jury that campbell despite holding the bat was backing away. the jury acquitted the assault. but richie was convicted of murder with deprafd indifference. >> i never denied shooting charles campbell. i shot him to stop from beating my father with the bat.

was that an act of intent? you can say so, but it's not murder. >> the da insisted justice was served. >> we brought murder changes and he was convicted of murder. that's what this case was about. >> i'm happy he came back in the light i wanted it to come back in. but i can't feel like a victim. two families were destroyed. >> there was something wrong about the case against richie. two eyewitnesss came forward saying they told police he was acting in self defense. they say police pressured him to tape the story. in 2006, dell an tony got the case. >> what i dealt with was whether or not certain witnesses were coerced and if so, whether the jury was made aware of this

coercion. >> although some witnesses from the trial supported the prosecution's version of the shooting, two who were closest were not. one of the withins was michael dillon. >> after giving the statement on the night of the shooting, he was picked up by police officers, night and day until he changed his statement. >> the dobbs ferry detectives kept asking me to do the same questions over and over again. >> here's what dylan told police. >> to my best recollection, the black guy was swinging the bat at the older male when the shots were fired. >> the jury never heard that. dylan testified that he was not swinging the bat. another key witness who refused to change his story and was not called to testify was james white. >> they told me other people said this and that and i said but i'm not interested in what

other people said. i'm telling you what i saw and this is the truth. >> white was standing in the deli and he saw charles campbell not as victim, but as aggressor. >> they're held him down only as long as it took for him to cease attacks. once he did that, they would let him up. >> white said that's when campbell got the bat, swinging at the elder. >> i'm looking at him saying my god, he's going to kill him. >> the jury never heard that version either. they found the autopsy report supported white's story. >> one of the things the district attorney's office couldn't get around at the hearing was that the bat was being held up right. the only way to get five wounds is this bullet went into the forearm into the chest. . >> in a scathing 69-page report, the judge called the district

attorney's case a wholesale assault on the justice system and criticized prosecutors for a win at all cost mind set. he set richie free. >> you started working and moved into your department. what else? >> met a woman, fell in love, got married and then had to come back here. >> the prosecutors appealed, arguing he had overstepped his authority. in a stunning reversal, a four-judge panel on new york's highest court ruled even had the judges changed their stories t likely would have changed the verdict. >> i don't know how they can say that. if 12 people heard that he stuck by his story, he finally changed it because he just didn't want to be harassed by the police department any longer. might the verdict have been different? the answer for me was yes. >> was this a miscarriage of

justice? >> i believe it was a miscarriage of justice. . >> today i'm here on my own free will to surrender to this court and i will continue to fight the fight. >> on june 3rd, 2010, richie returned to prison to finish his sentence of 20 to life. >> i feel for richie. irregardless of what he was thinking, i forgive him. not his action. >> it has been a tragedy from day one. i won't belittle that in any way, but how does a judge send you home? another judge say we don't agree with joe. we will send you back. >> would you have rather stayed in prison knowing what you know now? >> it was a time where i said yes, but then i would have never met my wife. that's the sunshine in this

dreary world. >> there is hope? >> there is always hope. . >> deb joins us. you talk about a possible richard's guilt has been affirmed by three appellate courts. >> the fact that it's holding them back, what happens next. what recourse does he have? >> the u.s. supreme court is how the. they declined to hear the case. the lawyer will appeal to court and prohibit the new evidence and hopefully to say the

eyewitness statements should have come in and then really the legal options are running out. he may have to wait until 2019 and the court said those two years he was out he has to serve those in prison. >> and he fell in love there as well. >> is she standing by him? >> absolutely. she has total faith in him and he has faith in her, but he is losing faith in the justice system. >> thank you. now it's up to you to decide. was justice served? >> you can go to our blog and let us know what you think. >> that's it for tonight's show. pafr we're leave you with a preview of my special report on the dangers of concussions.